Drones on the home front: Freedom or security?

Drones have won kudos in war zones for their efficient surveillance of the enemy and their tactical, lethal impact, when needed.

But the technology for drones — or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — is rapidly being reformulated and repackaged for domestic use, spurring debate over the significant potential benefits on the home front versus grave concerns for personal privacy.

The concern isn't lost on Jerry Wright, retired U.S. Air Force colonel and president of the Hampton Roads Chapter of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI).

"Every smart-thinking citizen should be concerned about this," said Wright. "But let's have a public discussion on this."

Many citizens are rightly wary that a UAV could be misused in law enforcement, he said, but that same UAV could also find your missing child or detect fires in the Great Dismal Swamp.

"It's the application of the thing, not the thing itself," said Wright.

"Our fear," said Ben Gielow, general counsel for AUVSI, "is that by overreacting to this new technology, it will stifle a promising new industry that has potential to do good."

Wright and Gielow were among Tuesday's speakers at the Fourth Annual Workshop on Intelligence and National Security at Christopher Newport University in Newport News. "The Reapers Come Home: Unmanned Systems, Domestic Surveillance and the Constitution" was intended to explore the ethics, uses, advances and regulation of UAVs on the home front.

The workshop was sponsored by CNU's Center for American Studies, the Hampton Roads Chapter of AUVSI and BOSH Global Services, a Newport News-based company specializing in unmanned systems.

It was held even as Virginia lawmakers consider bills in Richmond that would regulate the use of UAVs by police and government agencies, and require public monitoring of the use and retention of the data they collect. Eleven other states have introduced similar legislation so far this year, said Gielow.

The Virginia bills have the support of a diverse group that includes the progressive ACLU and the conservative Rutherford Institute, the Virginia Farm Bureau and the Virginia Tea Party Federation.

'No place to hide'

The key civil liberty at stake isn't the right to privacy, experts say, but the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

UAVs run as small as bees, and could be outfitted with an optical or thermal camera or chemical or nuclear detectors, said Wright, who acknowledged even he doesn't want them "flying around my house."

Most UAVs aren't the huge Predator combat dronethe public is more familiar with, said Don Roby, but small devices weighing less than 5 pounds, selling for between $50,000 and $100,000.

Roby is a commander with the Baltimore County Police Department and member of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association.

"Drones are getting ubiquitous," said workshop speaker Steven Bucci. "They're getting smaller and cheaper, and their use is going to spread."

Bucci is a director at the Heritage Foundation and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense under Donald Rumsfeld.

According to John W. Whitehead at Rutherford, who did not attend the workshop, at least 30,000 drones are expected to be operational in U.S. airspace by 2020. In a press release last week, he maintained the devices can be equipped with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, tear gas and tasers.

"Once these drones take to the skies, there really will be no place to hide," Whitehead said.

Asked about the possibility of police departments weaponizing UAVs, Geilow said they "do not support weaponizing them for domestic use. Police don't arm their manned helicopters, why arm unmanned (UAVs)?"

"They do not need armed unmanned vehicles," Bucci said flatly. The only justification for that scenario, he said, would be a foreign invasion.

"The cost to our civil liberties would be too high," he added. "New technology does not confer equal new powers on the government."

At the Hollydazzle festival in Newport News in November, for instance, BOSH Technologies offered the use of a small, balloon-like UAV to help unravel a traffic jam quickly, said Matt Twiggs, a vice president at BOSH.